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No, it should . It's disgusting.E &D were just kids and their deaths were tragedy's also.Their deaths were huge losses just like the rest. Just because the world is happy they died and celebrates their deaths doesn't make the above not true.

On April 20, Jessica Holliday became the face of the Columbine tragedy to millions around the world. This is her story. By Lisa Levitt Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer She is a very private person whose very public moment of grief made her the poster child for unspeakable tragedy. The flood of unwelcome fame began the morning after the deaths at Columbine High School. First came the early morning call from her brother, Derek, in Bismarck, N.D. “Have you seen the paper, Dad?” he asked Jay Holliday. “Jess is on the front page.” Holliday went downstairs and picked up his Denver Rocky Mountain News. On the cover was the same photo Derek had seen in North Dakota: 18-year-old Jessica Holliday, her hands clutching her head, her mouth open in a silent wail. HEARTBREAK read the headline, a word that barely expressed the emotion written on Jessica’s face. Her anguished image showed up on front pages in every corner of the world - along with magazine covers, the Internet, television. The camera caught a pretty face so distorted by despair that only family and friends knew for certain who it was. And only Jessica herself knew what she had been thinking and feeling just then. But that didn’t stop the rest of the world from claiming Jessica’s pain as its own. “That picture tells the whole story,” said Jessica’s mother, Kathy Holliday. “I can’t look at it without crying.” Jessica’s photo seemed to move everyone except Jessica herself. For her, the events of April 20 seemed unreal, and they still do. It felt unreal when the killers walked through Columbine ‘s library, laughing and shooting, while she hid under a table and prayed. It felt unreal when she went back into the library weeks later, and saw her best friend’s blood on the floor. “Even to this day, I like to pretend that I was out to lunch or at home,” she said. “Or that it happened at some other school. But not our school.” Because Jessica Holliday is not just the girl in the picture; she’s the girl in the middle. She knew the killers, and she knew their victims. They were nice guys. And they murdered her best friend. * They sat at the same table, the one nearest the entrance, every day at lunch time: Val Schnurr, Lisa Kreutz, Jeanna Parks, Jessica Holliday, Lauren Townsend. All good friends and seniors, excited about graduation and college. On that Tuesday, Jessica was sitting where she always sat, across from her best friend, Lauren. So far, it had been a great day. Jessica was wearing a new outfit. She was looking forward to starting a new job. She and Lauren had spent the whole hour before together; Jessica was counting on Lauren’s help with her physics. Another friend, Amber Huntington, caught Jessica’s attention, so she left her usual seat to walk to the back of the room to talk. And that’s where she was when she heard the first shots. Firecrackers, Jessica thought, or hammers. A senior prank. She didn’t really believe the teacher who came in yelling about guys with guns. And then everyone began ducking under tables, and Jessica started to run back to her table, back to Lauren. And at that moment, Amber grabbed Jessica’s hand and pulled her under the nearest table. “She probably saved my life,” Jessica said. Amber hadn’t wanted to go to school that day. And all morning, she had felt a powerful need to see Jessica, talk to Jessica. When the shooting began, Amber immediately reached for her friend. “I was scared,” Amber said, “and I wanted Jessica to stay with me.” Back at Jessica’s table, her other friends had become targets: Val. Jeanna. Lisa. Lauren. Under their table, Jessica and Amber held hands and prayed, through the gunfire, through the screams. Through the killers’ laughter. “In that moment, all you can do is pray that they won’t shoot you, pray that you won’t die,” Jessica said. “You’re not ready to die.” Jessica had seen Dylan Klebold with the gun before she ducked under the table, and it was difficult for her to reconcile that image with the quiet kid she knew. “It couldn’t be Dylan,” she thought, even though she knew it was. Dylan had been in her government class the semester before. He sat right in front of her, so they talked, mostly about homework. He would pass papers back. It couldn’t have been Dylan. Later, she found out that the other boy was Eric Harris. That was just as hard to believe. Eric’s older brother, Kevin, was her brother Derek’s best friend. Kevin was a great guy, like another brother to her. Eric had eaten dinner at her house once. Later, when it was over, Kevin Harris came to see her. “Are you OK?” he asked. And then, “Was it really my brother?” And Jessica said yes, but she wouldn’t say more. She felt sorry for Kevin, for all he suffered. But that couldn’t change what Eric had done. Later, she told her parents how she thought about standing up and telling Eric and Dylan to stop, as if reason might have been bullet-proof. Maybe they wouldn’t have killed her, because they both knew her. Later, Jessica told her mother she felt like a coward because she didn’t do anything to save her friends. But now she has accepted the fact that there was nothing she could have done. “Nobody could have stopped them. Nobody,” Jessica said with certainty. “They didn’t have a reason for shooting somebody. They just shot. I think no matter what anybody would have done, if someone had stood up and tried to stop them, that person would have gotten shot.” When the killers reached Jessica’s table, they had to reload. She heard them talking about cutting someone with a knife, what that would be like. Jessica, dressed in shorts, became painfully aware of her bare legs jutting out from under the table. Would they cut her? she wondered. Instead, they left to get more ammunition. The survivors of the library spilled out from under their tables and began to run. “And I didn’t want to run. Because I thought they were going to come back and just shoot us all. So for a second, I froze,” Jessica said. “Then the people at my table left and ran, and I finally got up.” And while Jessica ran, she thought about being shot in the back. When she got outside, she saw Val, who was alone and wounded, so Jessica held her. And then Jeanna was there, and she had been shot, too. Surrounded by her friends, bleeding. But no Lauren. “Where’s Lauren?” she asked Diwata Perez, who had been sitting at their table up front. “We tried to wake her up,” Diwata said. “Her eyes were closed. Maybe she passed out.” And at that moment, Jessica knew what had happened to Lauren. “Lauren is the strong one, she’s the survivor. She’s the one who would bail me out of anything,” Jessica said. “So I knew she was dead.” * The bullet that killed Lauren broke Jessica’s heart. They became friends in their first-grade class, once-in-a-lifetime kind of friends. They went on a church retreat every winter during high school, where they’d talk about God and their feelings and their lives. “We’d talk about our way-down secrets that we wouldn’t tell anybody else,” Jessica said. “Lauren had problems, but she’d never really let anybody know. She talked to me about it. But she never had a bad day. She had quiet days. But not bad days.” Lauren was always there: Coming over late to help Jessica with her math homework. Picking out Jessica’s prom dress with five days to go. Always ready to listen. They were bound together by their love of music - both played the piano and the clarinet - and by more difficult things, like the health problems suffered by Jessica’s mother, Kathy, and Lauren’s mother, Dawn. “We talked really in-depth on the winter retreat,” Jessica said. “Sometimes about God, but mostly about what we were going through in life right now, what it’s like. Me and Lauren, sometimes we don’t have easy lives. And we talked about that.” They drew strength from each other - and Lauren drew pictures for Jessica. Jessica saved them all. Sleeping Beauty. Jasmine. Jessica as Pocahontas. “We always sang Jesus Christ Superstar, and we’d dance to it. And so she drew Jesus on the cross for me.” On the back, Lauren wrote, “May He always be with you.” A week before she died, Lauren gave Jessica her last drawing. “She had smudged it,” Jessica said. “And I remember her saying, ‘I had a picture for you, but I ruined it. So I’ll redraw it for you.’ She never did. And finally I said, ‘Lauren, can I have that picture you smudged?’ So Lauren gave it to her. Her last drawing: an unfinished angel. It was a day after the shootings before Jessica knew for sure what her heart already had told her: that Lauren was dead. She felt anger then, and a survivor’s guilt. “If anything, I should have been the one to die, and not Lauren,” Jessica said. “For the first couple of days after, I thought, if I would have stayed at our table, I would have gotten shot and not Lauren - Lauren would have been safe. Or if I was there, my angel that was with me would have been with my whole table, and my whole table would have been OK.” Lauren’s parents asked to see her, and she didn’t know what she would say to them. “Her mother wanted to know exactly what had happened,” Jessica said. “And I told her most of it. But not all of it.” She told them about things she and Lauren had done together that they never knew about. She told them about Lauren’s drawings, which she gave them for an art show. She took Lauren’s yearbook and had all her best friends sign it, and then brought it back to Lauren’s parents. At Lauren’s funeral, and the Red Rocks memorial, Jessica stood in front of friends and family and strangers and brought to life the Lauren she knew, the smart, funny, down-to-earth girl who had a thing for space aliens and was perpetually late. A person everybody loved. A person without an enemy in the world. “Your best friend doesn’t die,” Jessica said. “Even to this day, I don’t believe it. I think maybe I could go call her, and she’ll be home. “And I’ll say, ‘What’s up?’” * Jessica doesn’t like the photo of herself. As many times as she has seen it, she still doesn’t feel its power, even though she knows it has touched millions. It just rubs her the wrong way. “It was weird to see myself. I didn’t like it, and I still don’t like it,” she said. “I was so sad that day, and so confused. And then here it is, right there. All the stuff I was going through, and everybody could see it.” What people see now is a young woman looking forward. In the fall, Jessica plans to go to Mesa State College. She isn’t sure what she’ll study. But April 20 gave her a new perspective on her future. “I want to live more like Lauren - try to get along with everybody, try to work harder. She’s my hero,” Jessica said. “I want to do something to help people. So that every day is like a new day, you know?” Jessica still struggles to get past that one day. She returned to the library with the other survivors, thinking that it would help her accept Lauren’s death. But it didn’t help at all. She saw the bullet holes and the blood. It was like a movie set, like dye splashed on the floor. All of it, still so unreal, obscured by a heavy curtain of denial that Jessica has yet to pull back. She told her story with feeling, but no tears. Her voice resonated with love for Lauren but no hint of bitterness toward Eric and Dylan. “I don’t have any hate,” Jessica said. “I feel sorry for the boys, because they hated life so much that they had to destroy others. I feel sorry for them. Because they couldn’t enjoy life, like me and Lauren could.” “I can’t hate them. Because I knew them, both of them. “But I don’t want to ever think about them again. Because they killed my best friend. My best friend, who knew every little part of my life. They took her.” Jessica’s parents worry about her. “She’s strong, so strong,” said Jessica’s mother, Kathy. “But she hasn’t dealt with all of this yet. She hasn’t cried. I cry all the time. But she hasn’t cried.” She wasn’t crying in that photo, either, Jessica insisted. People seemed to think they could look at her face and know her thoughts in that terrible second. Life magazine printed the picture with a caption that said Jessica was reacting to the news that her best friend was dead. That wasn’t it. “I was praying,” she said. “And I was asking, ‘What just happened? Why our school? Why is everybody hurting?’ I was thinking about Lauren, and I was asking why? Why? “It was a moment with God.”

_________________Life moves pretty fast and if you don't stop to look around in awhile, you could miss it- Ferris Bueller

Yeah, I know it's a Dave Cullen article. Still, an interesting taken on the Jock vs. TCM "you're gay freaks" climate immediately after 4/20. Thought Dustin Gorton's comments were interesting. He presently runs a Columbine survivor PTSD community on Facebook. It's just amazing to me that he was in the car with Dylan just a day before 4/20 filming the Breakfast run vid. I would so like to pick his brains..

Not a single friend or acquaintance of Harris and Klebold confirmed the gay rumors. All either denied the story or said they had no idea about the sexual orientation of either student. “It’s the stupidest thing I ever heard,” said senior Melissa Snow, who had known Klebold since middle school, but only had limited contact with him this year, since he joined the Trench Coat Mafia.

Several students expressed anger at the jocks for spreading rumors to defame the two in death with the same slurs that dogged them through life. Dustin Gorton, a good friend of Harris and Klebold, was particularly outraged. “I think it’d be really funny if you tried to tell their girlfriends that they were gay,” he said. Gorton, a brawny 6-foot senior dressed in camouflage pants, said prom pictures had been taken with Harris and Klebold and their girlfriends, but hadn’t been developed. He promised that the media would never see the pictures, or find the two young women.

“You’re never going to get those names. [The girlfriends] are so far hidden, and they are so screwed up right now,” he said. Gorton described himself as a “nontraditional jock” who played Doom on the Internet with the two killers, as well as baseball with a team outside the school. He said he was not a member of the Trench Coat Mafia.

Exorcising the PainBy Betsy Streisand and Angie CannonPosted 5/2/99“Only a handful of people came to say goodbye to Dylan Klebold. His long, skinny body fit awkwardly into the cardboard casket where it would lie until cremation. His hands were folded on his chest, and stuffed animals surrounded him. His family and few friends shared memories, the happy ones about Dylan the Boy Scout, Dylan the Little Leaguer, Dylan the wrestler. There was his mother Susan’s favorite story: One afternoon, Dylan, age 10, came running back from the creek with a pile of leeches. Normally unflappable, Klebold’s mother was disgusted by her son’s blood-sucking treasures; Dylan loved it, the fun of grossing out Mom. For those who attended the service, it was as if Dylan’s life had ended at age 12, not five years later in a murderous rampage that left 12 students, a teacher, and the two killers dead, and a nation grieving and groping for answers. That wasn’t the young man Susan Klebold raised. “This monster," she told her hairdresser, Dee Grant, tears coming down her cheeks, “was not the son I knew.”

More here..Exorcising the Pain Littleton buries its dead and tries to understand

Exorcising the PainBy Betsy Streisand and Angie CannonPosted 5/2/99“Only a handful of people came to say goodbye to Dylan Klebold. His long, skinny body fit awkwardly into the cardboard casket where it would lie until cremation. His hands were folded on his chest, and stuffed animals surrounded him. His family and few friends shared memories, the happy ones about Dylan the Boy Scout, Dylan the Little Leaguer, Dylan the wrestler. There was his mother Susan’s favorite story: One afternoon, Dylan, age 10, came running back from the creek with a pile of leeches. Normally unflappable, Klebold’s mother was disgusted by her son’s blood-sucking treasures; Dylan loved it, the fun of grossing out Mom. For those who attended the service, it was as if Dylan’s life had ended at age 12, not five years later in a murderous rampage that left 12 students, a teacher, and the two killers dead, and a nation grieving and groping for answers. That wasn’t the young man Susan Klebold raised. “This monster," she told her hairdresser, Dee Grant, tears coming down her cheeks, “was not the son I knew.”

More here..Exorcising the Pain Littleton buries its dead and tries to understand

The original find goes to go-romans-go on Tumblr.

I've not seen this one before. Cardboard casket. *shudders* SIGH

That was such a heartbreaking article

_________________Life moves pretty fast and if you don't stop to look around in awhile, you could miss it- Ferris Bueller

Exorcising the PainBy Betsy Streisand and Angie CannonPosted 5/2/99“Only a handful of people came to say goodbye to Dylan Klebold. His long, skinny body fit awkwardly into the cardboard casket where it would lie until cremation. His hands were folded on his chest, and stuffed animals surrounded him. His family and few friends shared memories, the happy ones about Dylan the Boy Scout, Dylan the Little Leaguer, Dylan the wrestler. There was his mother Susan’s favorite story: One afternoon, Dylan, age 10, came running back from the creek with a pile of leeches. Normally unflappable, Klebold’s mother was disgusted by her son’s blood-sucking treasures; Dylan loved it, the fun of grossing out Mom. For those who attended the service, it was as if Dylan’s life had ended at age 12, not five years later in a murderous rampage that left 12 students, a teacher, and the two killers dead, and a nation grieving and groping for answers. That wasn’t the young man Susan Klebold raised. “This monster," she told her hairdresser, Dee Grant, tears coming down her cheeks, “was not the son I knew.”

More here..Exorcising the Pain Littleton buries its dead and tries to understand

The original find goes to go-romans-go on Tumblr.

I've not seen this one before. Cardboard casket. *shudders* SIGH

That was such a heartbreaking article

I know, right? Just reading that paragraph again automatically makes me melancholy..

The Toledo Blade (newspaper)December 15, 1999They are all awkward adolescence, with too-big feet and the chortling satisfaction boys find in cracking their knuckles. They sit side by side in basement recliners, late into the night, munching Slim Jims and candy and occasionally swigging from a big bottle of Jack Daniel’s. They have put a video camera on a tripod to record this farewell to the world, one of several taped messages they will leave, starting weeks before their killing spree at Columbine High School. They make their young mouths tough with dirty words. They smile over shared schoolboy memories, curse humankind, speak fondly of their parents, and joke about the fun they might have as ghosts, making scary noises. And they explain over and over why they want to kill as many people as they can. It’s exactly what the whole world has heard by now. Kids taunted them in day care, in elementary school, in middle school, in high school. Adults wouldn’t let them strike back, fight their tormentors the way such disputes once were settled in schoolyards. So they gritted their teeth. And their rage grew. "It’s humanity," Dylan Klebold says, flipping an obscene gesture toward the camera. “Look at what you made," he tells the world. "You’re fucking shit, you humans, and you need to die," he says. "Even us," Eric Harris adds. We need to die, too. Of course, we’ll fucking die killing you fucking shit."They lean back in their recliners, Harris cradling a shotgun and Klebold playing with a toothpick. When they knock over a pop can, they worry, good children, that they have made a mess. Later they model the black suits they will wear on “Judgement Day."They talk about books they’ve liked and describe how they will kill classmates who have annoyed them most. "When you find the body of one," Klebold says, looking straight into the camera, “he’s a sophomore….Look for his jaw. It won’t be on his body." Harris talks about scalping another boy. They say they hope the afterlife—if there is one—is like spending eternity in Doom, the video game they love most. Harris says it would be neat if the afterlife included getting to look at the world’s mysteries, like the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean. They sneer at life in the suburbs, rant obscenely at blacks and feminists and born-again Christians and jocks and people who wear Tommy Hilfiger clothes. They mimic people they think are stupid, using squeaky, funny voices and funny faces."I just know I want to kill the fuckers who fucked with me," Klebold says. They talk about the bombs they will plant at their school. "Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick," Harris says. They laugh. They expect to be famous, to have a cult of followers after they die. They have advice for potential followers. "If you’re going to go fuckin’ psycho and kill a bunch of people like us….do it right," Klebold says. They expect tougher gun laws to be discussed because of them. Don’t do it, they say; it will only create a black market in guns. “Putting more laws on won’t change that," Klebold says. Then Harris says, “Let’s talk about our parents for a minute." Klebold begins coldly. “It’s my life," he says. “They gave it to me, I can do with it what I want….If they don’t like it, I’m sorry, but that’s too bad." Harris is gentler. “They might have made some mistakes that they weren’t really aware of in their life with me, but they couldn’t have helped it." Both boys say again and again that their parents are great.The Klebolds saw this tape in the fall. They cried. The Harris parents know the tape exists but haven’t seen it. "It’s sucks to do this to them," Harris says. “They’re going to go through hell once we’re finished. They’re never going to see the end of it." Klebold promises his parents there was nothing they could have done to stop what will happen. “You can’t understand what we feel; you can’t understand no matter how much you think you can," he says. Harris explains why he didn’t spend more time with his family. “I didn’t want to do any more bonding with them. It will be a lot easier on them if I haven’t been around as much." Klebold addresses all his relatives. “I’m sorry I have so much rage," he says. He samples a mouthful of candy with a swig of whiskey. Harris speaks lovingly of his mother then adds, “I really am sorry about all of this. But war’s war."

I love how they mention that they hope the afterlife is an eternal game of Doom. Silly young boys, they have no idea what they're asking for. Of course, simultaneously in private, Dylan's journals mention how he plans to float away to the Halcyon and be with his love. Dylan knows how to rejoin in sentiments that appeal to his best bud. They are a dyad when together, of one mind. Most especially when playing towards the camera.

Then, of course, there's the whole thing about them haunting people as ghosts. heheh. If they only knew how they haunt many of us. Not the way they think! ;)

The Toledo Blade (newspaper)December 15, 1999They are all awkward adolescence, with too-big feet and the chortling satisfaction boys find in cracking their knuckles. They sit side by side in basement recliners, late into the night, munching Slim Jims and candy and occasionally swigging from a big bottle of Jack Daniel’s. They have put a video camera on a tripod to record this farewell to the world, one of several taped messages they will leave, starting weeks before their killing spree at Columbine High School. They make their young mouths tough with dirty words. They smile over shared schoolboy memories, curse humankind, speak fondly of their parents, and joke about the fun they might have as ghosts, making scary noises. And they explain over and over why they want to kill as many people as they can. It’s exactly what the whole world has heard by now. Kids taunted them in day care, in elementary school, in middle school, in high school. Adults wouldn’t let them strike back, fight their tormentors the way such disputes once were settled in schoolyards. So they gritted their teeth. And their rage grew. "It’s humanity," Dylan Klebold says, flipping an obscene gesture toward the camera. “Look at what you made," he tells the world. "You’re fucking shit, you humans, and you need to die," he says. "Even us," Eric Harris adds. We need to die, too. Of course, we’ll fucking die killing you fucking shit."They lean back in their recliners, Harris cradling a shotgun and Klebold playing with a toothpick. When they knock over a pop can, they worry, good children, that they have made a mess. Later they model the black suits they will wear on “Judgement Day."They talk about books they’ve liked and describe how they will kill classmates who have annoyed them most. "When you find the body of one," Klebold says, looking straight into the camera, “he’s a sophomore….Look for his jaw. It won’t be on his body." Harris talks about scalping another boy. They say they hope the afterlife—if there is one—is like spending eternity in Doom, the video game they love most. Harris says it would be neat if the afterlife included getting to look at the world’s mysteries, like the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean. They sneer at life in the suburbs, rant obscenely at blacks and feminists and born-again Christians and jocks and people who wear Tommy Hilfiger clothes. They mimic people they think are stupid, using squeaky, funny voices and funny faces."I just know I want to kill the fuckers who fucked with me," Klebold says. They talk about the bombs they will plant at their school. "Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick," Harris says. They laugh. They expect to be famous, to have a cult of followers after they die. They have advice for potential followers. "If you’re going to go fuckin’ psycho and kill a bunch of people like us….do it right," Klebold says. They expect tougher gun laws to be discussed because of them. Don’t do it, they say; it will only create a black market in guns. “Putting more laws on won’t change that," Klebold says. Then Harris says, “Let’s talk about our parents for a minute." Klebold begins coldly. “It’s my life," he says. “They gave it to me, I can do with it what I want….If they don’t like it, I’m sorry, but that’s too bad." Harris is gentler. “They might have made some mistakes that they weren’t really aware of in their life with me, but they couldn’t have helped it." Both boys say again and again that their parents are great.The Klebolds saw this tape in the fall. They cried. The Harris parents know the tape exists but haven’t seen it. "It’s sucks to do this to them," Harris says. “They’re going to go through hell once we’re finished. They’re never going to see the end of it." Klebold promises his parents there was nothing they could have done to stop what will happen. “You can’t understand what we feel; you can’t understand no matter how much you think you can," he says. Harris explains why he didn’t spend more time with his family. “I didn’t want to do any more bonding with them. It will be a lot easier on them if I haven’t been around as much." Klebold addresses all his relatives. “I’m sorry I have so much rage," he says. He samples a mouthful of candy with a swig of whiskey. Harris speaks lovingly of his mother then adds, “I really am sorry about all of this. But war’s war."

I love how they mention that they hope the afterlife is an eternal game of Doom. Silly young boys, they have no idea what they're asking for. Of course, simultaneously in private, Dylan's journals mention how he plans to float away to the Halcyon and be with his love. Dylan knows how to rejoin in sentiments that appeal to his best bud. They are a dyad when together, of one mind. Most especially when playing towards the camera.

Then, of course, there's the whole thing about them haunting people as ghosts. heheh. If they only knew how they haunt many of us. Not the way they think! ;)

I was just going to post this. But you beat me to it!!

_________________Life moves pretty fast and if you don't stop to look around in awhile, you could miss it- Ferris Bueller

Authorities ReleaseChilling Columbine VideotapesBy Judith Crosson[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]12-15-99

GOLDEN, Colorado - U.S. officials made public 2-1/2 hours of chilling videotapes of the two teenage Columbine High School gunmen bragging about plans to kill as many people as they could to pay back every slight ever suffered in school.

The tapes, shown to reporters a day after Time magazine made the Columbine gunmen the cover story of its latest issue, offer the fullest reasons yet -- hatred of others, anger at being slighted and despair at living -- as to why Dylan Klebold, 17, and Eric Harris, 18, killed 13 people at the school on April 20 before taking their own lives.

"If you could see all the anger I've stored up for four years (of high school)," Klebold said in one tape while sitting on an easy chair in Harris' home as the latter drank from a whiskey bottle and fondled a rife.

Klebold turned, facing the stationary camera and said, "I'm going to kill you all. ... We are going to kill 250 of you. ... It's humanity that I hate." Harris then added, "I've never been able to get any pay back."

Release of the tapes to first Time and then the general media has infuriated parents. Some criticised the release as coming too close to Christmas and rekindling tragic feelings.

Gov. Bill Owens said families should have been shown the tapes before they "were plastered across the front cover of Time magazine."

Jefferson County Schools Superintendent Jane Hammond said the information on the tapes was a shock. "We believe it revictimises and retraumatises our community and our families," she said.

In the tapes, Klebold and Harris decry middle class life, make constant racial slurs, apologise to their parents for what they are about to do and wonder about life after death.

The two look like typical American teenagers, sitting in easy chairs, goofing off, using bad language. But the venom spills out as they claim they've evolved "one step above" human beings.

Klebold complained about how he was treated in day care and how freshmen at Columbine even treated him badly, although he was a senior, about to graduate.

"I hope death is like you're in a dream state. I want to spend all my time there," Harris said.

The tapes also include a tour of Harris' messy bedroom full of small incendiary devices, pipe bombs, ammunition, a knife whose case has a swastika on it, shells and clips. He points to various things on his dusty book shelves and says "thank goodness my parents don't search my room."

The parents of both boys have been criticised for not knowing what their children were up to.

Just before they left for Columbine High School the fateful day of April 20, Klebold says on the last tape the two made: "I'm going to a better place than this. I didn't like life too much."

The two boys had nothing but praise for their parents and expressed fear their families would suffer because of what they were going to do.

Sheriff's deputy Wayne Holverson said a Time reporter was allowed to view the videotapes "with the clear understanding that it was for background purposes only and not to be referenced in the Time article in any manner."

But Time magazine strongly disagreed. "The tapes and the other evidence were given to Time with no restrictions on their use, so that readers could get a complete picture of the investigation. No agreement was violated," Time Managing Editor Walter Isaacson said in a statement.

Sheriff John Stone met with parents on Monday to allow them to view the tapes. Two parents, Randy and Judy Brown whose son Brooks had been targeted by Harris on the Internet but not harmed in the attack on the school, viewed the tapes with reporters.

When asked outside why they wanted to see the tapes, Judy Brown, holding back tears said: "To see what we had to see, to help us through this."

_________________If Frodo can get the ring to Mordor, you can get out of bed.